The stretch of the Major Arterial Road in New Town where a young man and a woman on a scooter were run over on Saturday night has a series of guardrails on the carriageway, which force vehicles to zigzag dangerously.

The Telegraph visited the accident spot — near the Kolkata Gate intersection, where a pedestrian subway complex is being built — on Monday afternoon and found that guardrails painted in blue and white had swallowed a large part of the road space.

The vehicles headed towards the airport from Sector V were not only having to take a sharp left turn at the intersection but also zigzag their way past the guardrails. The vehicles headed from the Unitech intersection towards the airport, too, had to zigzag through another set of guardrails.

Both sets of vehicles were getting dangerously close to each other at the point where the two roads meet.

Guardrails set up by police in the middle of roads in New Town to slow down vehicles and check accidents have become more of a traffic hazard as they are barely visible from a distance, said those who drive regularly through the township.

Dipayan Mukherjee and Medha Paul, both employees of a multinational IT company, were headed towards the airport after dinner in New Town on a scooter on Saturday night when they were hit from behind by a truck near the intersection off Kolkata Gate. They were rushed to Bidhannagar Sub-divisional Hospital, where they were declared dead.

A guard posted at the site where the pedestrian subway complex is being built said Mukherjee was trying to steer his two-wheeler past the guardrails when the truck hit them.

Dhirtiman Sarkar, deputy commissioner, traffic, Bidhannagar commissionerate, said they were scanning footage of CCTV cameras placed at the next traffic crossing. “We have started a probe. A truck can be seen moving at a high speed at the next crossing. We are trying to track down the driver,” Sarkar said.

Another officer of the commissionerate said guardrails often got covered in dust and grime of the road and that prevented drivers from identifying them from a distance.

Most iron guardrails were coated in a thick layer of dust and some only had remnants of paint left, interspersed with large patches of rust.

They easily blend into the backdrop of trees and shrubs planted along the median divider.

“They are very difficult to spot from a distance. At night, they suddenly loom up right in front, forcing a motorist to either hit the brakes hard or swerve,” said Sukriti Bhattacharya, who lives in New Town.